Content-aware encoding of cloud gaming

云游戏是一个规模庞大且快速增长的数十亿美元产业。云游戏使用户可以在平板电脑、智能手机和智能电视等瘦客户端上玩游戏，而不用担心处理能力、内存大小、显卡功能以及软件的安装/更新。因此，高质量的游戏几乎可以在任何设备、任何地点玩，而不需要高端游戏机。这大大增加了潜在用户数量，从而增加了市场规模。云游戏本质上是将游戏逻辑和渲染从用户设备转移到云端。因此，整个游戏在云端运行，渲染的场景会实时流媒体呈现给用户。然而，来自云的渲染和流媒体极大地增加了为游戏客户端提供服务所需的带宽。此外，考虑到客户端的大规模和异构性，需要从云中实时创建和提供大量流。这给云游戏提供商带来了重大挑战。因此，最小化渲染、编码、定制和向数百万用户传递游戏流所需的资源是一个重要问题。当我们考虑到3D和沉浸式增强/虚拟现实（AR/VR）游戏等高级和下一代游戏时，这个问题变得更加复杂。我们的工业合作伙伴AMD （Advanced**Micro Devices）是游戏行业的主要利益相关者。AMD为游戏提供商提供先进的硬件，如AMD Radeon Sky系列显卡，以及软件工具，如AMD RapidFire软件开发工具包（SDK）。RapidFire SDK有助于控制Radeon Sky图形卡上的视频编码器，以不同的质量配置（例如，**分辨率和帧速率）并发编码多个流。AMD面临的一个重要问题是开发方法来自适应控制车载视频编码器的各种参数，以最大限度地减少所需的网络带宽，同时**向异构客户端提供尽可能高的质量，这是本项目的重点。

Cloud gaming is a large, and rapidly growing multibillion-dollar industry. Cloud gaming enables users to play**games on thin clients such as tablets, smartphones, and smart TVs without worrying about processing power,**memory size, graphics card capabilities, and installing/updating software. Thus, high-quality games can be**played virtually on any device, anywhere, without the need for high-end gaming consoles. This significantly**increases the potential number of users and thus the market size. Cloud gaming essentially moves the game**logic and rendering from the user's device to the cloud. As a result, the entire game runs on the cloud and the**rendered scenes are then streamed to users in real-time. Rendering and streaming from the cloud, however,**substantially increase the required bandwidth to serve gaming clients. Moreover, given the large-scale and**heterogeneity of clients, numerous streams need to be created and served from the cloud in real time. This**creates a major challenge for cloud gaming providers. Thus, minimizing the resources needed to render,**encode, customize, and deliver gaming streams to millions of users is an important problem. This problem gets**even more complex when we consider advanced and next-generation games such as 3D and immersive**augmented/virtual reality (AR/VR) games, which are getting popular. Our industrial partner, AMD (Advanced**Micro Devices), is a major stakeholder in the gaming industry. AMD provides advanced hardware to gaming**providers, such as the AMD Radeon Sky Series Graphics Cards, as well as software tools, such as the AMD**RapidFire Software Development Kit (SDK. The RapidFire SDK facilitates the control of the video encoder on**the Radeon Sky graphics cards to concurrently encode multiple streams at different quality configurations (e.g.,**resolutions and frame rates). An important problem for AMD is to develop methods to adaptively control the**various parameters of the on-board video encoder to minimize the required network bandwidth while**delivering the highest possible quality to heterogeneous clients, which is the focus of this project.